Survey seeks insight into youth homelessness

By R.A. Schuetz

Updated
11:37 am EST, Saturday, January 27, 2018

Volunteers with Fairfield County's Annual Youth Count including Eliza McNamara perform a homeless count for youth Wednesday, at the WHEELS Hub bus station on Burnell Boulevard in Norwalk. There was little data for homeless youth in Fairfield County until recent years, and even current numbers are believed to be underreported by advocates because young homeless people tend to avoid shelters and areas where homeless adults congregate. less

Volunteers with Fairfield County's Annual Youth Count including Eliza McNamara perform a homeless count for youth Wednesday, at the WHEELS Hub bus station on Burnell Boulevard in Norwalk. There was little data ... more

Volunteers with Fairfield County's Annual Youth Count including Eliza McNamara perform a homeless count for youth Wednesday, at the WHEELS Hub bus station on Burnell Boulevard in Norwalk. There was little data for homeless youth in Fairfield County until recent years, and even current numbers are believed to be underreported by advocates because young homeless people tend to avoid shelters and areas where homeless adults congregate. less

Volunteers with Fairfield County's Annual Youth Count including Eliza McNamara perform a homeless count for youth Wednesday, at the WHEELS Hub bus station on Burnell Boulevard in Norwalk. There was little data ... more

NORWALK — When a wave of buses arrives at the WHEELS Hub at once, it can be difficult to tell who is going where. People scatter, moving from one vehicle to another, as the morning light bounces off the bus shelter and the parking garage across the street.

In their midst on Wednesday stood two volunteers, Eliza McNamara and Nancy Meany, both dressed in long coats and clutching surveys — McNamara’s printed out in packets and Meany’s downloaded on her phone.

“Excuse me, do you have a second?” McNamara asked a young man in a red sweatshirt. He paused, giving her enough opening for her pitch: “I’m trying to do a survey for people under 25 to understand their housing needs — and I have a gift card for you.”

The ultimate goal of the survey was to collect data on youth homelessness — but finding young people who are homeless, and recognizing them when you do, is a notoriously difficult task.

“I mean, a lot of times young people don’t even identify as homeless,” McNamara reflected. “A lot of times you may be staying with a friend, and you’re not staying on the streets, so you don’t think you’re homeless. But you’re couch surfing, so you don’t have anywhere to go. So it’s a specific subset of people, and it’s hard to know how to help if you don’t really understand it.”

That’s what brought volunteers like McNamara and Meany to places where young people pass through, such as libraries, train stations and the Norwalk Community College campus, to survey as many people under 25 as they could.

While the federal government has required counts estimating adult homelessness for over a decade, last week marked the third Connecticut Youth Count. The most recent data shows that Fairfield County has over 760 homeless and unstably housed young people between the ages of 13 and 24 — much higher than previous estimates.

Despite all this, McNamara said she was optimistic that the data she was gathering would help Connecticut reach its goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020.

She’s speaking from a place of experience. Now a member of the Youth Advisory Board, which works with housing issues, McNamara has insight into many of the programs currently in place to help unstably housed youth.

As a child, she was removed from her mother’s custody and went to a residential school for children in similar situations. When she aged out of services provided by the Department of Children and Families, she moved into transitional housing with Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMAS), which she recalls as a “safe bridge to independence.”

There, she graduated from high school, started college and got a job.

“DMAS provides you with a lot of safety nets,” she recalled. But once she joined the Youth Advisory Board, she learned that many people who need similar resources do not qualify for them.

“They’re kind of caught in the middle ground where they need resources, but do not qualify for certain services,” she said. “And I think once the need is known — once it’s known how many people are caught in that in-between, gray area — systems can be put in place to help those people.”

The increased attention on young people has already made a difference. Data has shown that unstably housed youth under the age of 25 do not feel safe or comfortable in general-age shelters, and many are young mothers or members of the LGBTQ community. Since 2015, new resources including beds at the Triangle Community Center in Norwalk, Homes with Hope in Westport and Pacific House in Stamford have been dedicated to young people.

“What do young people need? Young people really need options,” McNamara said.

And so she went back to asking young people about their living situations, pen in hand.